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The project manager for a construction job at which a flagman was killed testified Wednesday that his repeated requests to Ontario’s Transportation Ministry to reduce speed limits were in the interest of worker safety.

Mike Ifabumuyi testified at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Brian Daniel, who was struck by a pickup truck and killed July 2, 2014, when he was a flagman for bridge repair on Highway 3 at Burwell Road in St. Thomas.

“This was a safety issue where the workers’ safety should have taken precedence over policy,” Ifabumuyi said.

Ifabumuyi has worked for Facca Inc. as project manager for more than two decades. The company was repairing the Burwell Road overpass for the ministry when Daniel was killed.

Ifabumuyi had helped create a traffic control plan for the job that included a proposed speed limit cut from 80 km/h to 60 km/h.

The Essex County company asked the ministry to approve the reduction when flagmen were out, Ifabumuyi said. “That was the safest method . . . to use for traffic control.”

Ifabumuyi said he made the request based on his years of experience in construction and the fact that a reduced speed limit was granted on a similar job in 2013.

“Just from seeing the speeds in the past, even though it was an 80 (km/h zone) I felt they (drivers) were going above 80 (km/h),” Ifabumuyi said.

Facca Inc. sent the traffic control plan to the ministry in January 2014 and received a response that said the ministry would not granted a regulatory (enforceable) speed reduction because the project didn’t meet ministry guidelines.

“My next step was, I have to find a way to convince them to reconsider,” Ifabumuyi said.

Facca decided to send a “strongly worded response stating that we disagree with the decision and we’d like them to reconsider,” Ifabumuyi testified.

Though Facca’s second bid to get the speed limit reduced was denied, Ifabumuyi was still determined.

“I just had tunnel vision that that was the only solution that I was going to accept . . . because I didn’t want to compromise,” he said.

It was only after Daniel’s death and after Local 1059 of the Labourers’ International Union of North America threatened a work refusal that the ministry agreed to lower the speed limit to 60 km/h.